Romanticism in visual arts began in the 1760s and showed a change in how artists painted landscapes and scenes. This style focused on nature’s beauty, strong human feelings, and the past, often linking these themes to a nation’s identity and history.

Romantic art spread throughout Europe and later influenced American artists, who used these ideas to show the special features of the American landscape. Over time, its influence reached the world, shaping many art forms and encouraging artists to express deep emotions about nature and changes in society. Romantic art showed how important individual viewpoints and shared human experiences are, leaving a lasting effect on art across many cultures.

Beginnings

In the visual arts, Romanticism first appeared in landscape painting. As early as the 1760s, British artists began painting wilder landscapes and storms, and Gothic architecture, even if they used Wales as a setting. Caspar David Friedrich and J. M. W. Turner were born less than a year apart in 1774 and 1775, respectively. Both artists pushed German and English landscape painting to the extreme of Romanticism. However, their artistic styles were shaped during a time when Romanticism was already common in art. John Constable, born in 1776, stayed closer to the English landscape tradition. In his large paintings called "six-footers," he showed the working countryside where he grew up as heroic, challenging the traditional belief that landscape painting was less important than other types of art. Turner also painted large landscapes, especially seascapes. Some of his paintings showed modern scenes with small figures, while others used tiny figures to create the feeling of history paintings, similar to the style of artists like Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa, a late Baroque painter whose work Romantic artists often used for inspiration. Friedrich often placed single figures or symbols like crosses in vast landscapes, showing the shortness of human life and the idea of death.

Other artists expressed feelings that were almost mystical, often moving away from classical drawing and proportions. These artists included William Blake, Samuel Palmer, and members of the Ancients in England, as well as Philipp Otto Runge in Germany. Like Friedrich, these artists did not have much influence during their lifetimes and were rediscovered in the 20th century. Blake was always known as a poet, and Norway’s leading painter Johan Christian Dahl was greatly influenced by Friedrich. The Nazarene movement, a group of German artists based in Rome and active from 1810, took a different path. They focused on medieval-style history paintings with religious and national themes.

By country

German Romantic art was popular from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. It was a response to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, which focused on reason and science. Instead, Romantic art focused on feelings, creativity, and the idea of something very powerful or awe-inspiring, called the sublime. It often showed nature, individual people, and the supernatural.

In painting, artists like Caspar David Friedrich and Karl Friedrich Schinkel explored themes of spirituality and the infinite in large landscapes. Friedrich’s famous painting, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, shows a person looking over a foggy sea, symbolizing the search for meaning in nature’s beauty and the loneliness of human life. Nature was often shown as both grand and mysterious, reflecting the Romantic fascination with the sublime.

The movement also included themes from medieval times and folklore. Artists like Philipp Otto Runge and Joseph Anton Koch used German myths, national identity, and folk traditions in their work, blending history with dreamlike and fantastical elements.

In literature, Romantics like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Novalis explored deep emotions and spirituality, greatly influencing visual art.

Examples of artworks:
– Philipp Otto Runge, Birth of the Human Soul, around 1806
– Caspar David Friedrich, Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar), 1808. This was Friedrich’s first major work, showing the crucifixion as part of a landscape instead of a traditional altarpiece.
– Friedrich, Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, 1818. This painting celebrates Friedrich’s marriage to Christiane Caroline Bommer, whom he married in 1818.
– Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, Mignon, 1828

In France, Romanticism was slower to appear because Neoclassicism was strong in the art academies. However, during the Napoleonic period, it became popular, especially in history paintings that supported the new government. One early example was Girodet’s Ossian receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes, painted for Napoleon’s Château de Malmaison. Girodet’s teacher, David, was confused by his student’s style, saying, “Either Girodet is mad or I no longer know anything of the art of painting.” A new generation of French artists developed personal Romantic styles, focusing on history paintings with political messages. Théodore Géricault first gained fame with The Charging Chasseur, a heroic military figure inspired by Rubens, but his most famous work, The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19), criticized the government.

Eugène Delacroix made his first Salon hits with The Barque of Dante (1822), The Massacre at Chios (1824), and Death of Sardanapalus (1827). The Massacre at Chios depicted a scene from the Greek War of Independence, completed the year Byron died there. Death of Sardanapalus was based on one of Byron’s plays. Delacroix also painted scenes of Arab warriors in North Africa. His Liberty Leading the People (1830) is one of the most famous French Romantic paintings, like The Raft of the Medusa. These works showed real events and focused on “history painting,” which meant painting scenes from real life, not religion or mythology.

Francisco Goya was called “the last great painter in whose art thought and observation were balanced and combined to form a faultless unity.” However, whether he was a Romantic is debated. In Spain, Goya was part of the Enlightenment, which promoted reason. His art had dark, imaginative elements, but he also used classic and realistic styles. He shared Romantic values by showing his personal feelings and imagination. His use of thick paint and visible brushstrokes was more common in Romantic art than in Neoclassicism.

Examples of artworks:
– George Stubbs, A Lion Attacking a Horse (1770), Yale Center for British Art
– John Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare (1781), Detroit Institute of Arts
– Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808 (1814)
– Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1819)
– J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up (1839)

In America, Romanticism appeared in the Hudson River School, where artists like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Edwin Church painted untamed American landscapes. They sometimes showed ancient ruins, like in Fredric Edwin Church’s Sunrise in Syria, which reflected Gothic themes of death and decay. These paintings also showed the Romantic idea that nature is powerful and will eventually overcome human creations. American artists often painted scenes unique to their country, as seen in W. C. Bryant’s poem To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe, which encouraged Cole to remember America’s special landscapes.

Some American paintings, like Albert Bierstadt’s The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, promoted the idea of the “noble savage” by showing idealized Native Americans living in harmony with nature. Thomas Cole’s works, such as The Voyage of Life series (1840s), used allegory to show life’s stages set against vast nature.

Examples of artworks:
– Thomas Cole, Childhood (1842), part of The Voyage of Life
– Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Old Age (1842)
– William Blake, Albion Rose (1794–95)
– Louis Janmot, The Poem of the Soul (before 1854)

In other parts of Europe, Romantic styles were used. In Russia, artists like Orest Kiprensky and Vasily Tropinin painted portraits, while Ivan Aivazovsky specialized in marine scenes. In Norway, Hans Gude painted fjords. In Poland, Piotr Michałowski used Romantic styles in paintings about the Napoleonic Wars. In Italy, Francesco Hayez was a leading Romantic artist in Milan, starting as a Neoclassical painter, moving through Romanticism, and ending as a sentimental painter of young women. His Romantic works included large historical paintings influenced by Baroque artists.

Sculpture

Sculpture was not greatly influenced by Romanticism, likely because the most valued material at the time, marble, was not well-suited for creating large, dramatic movements. The top sculptors in Europe, Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen, both worked in Rome and were strong supporters of Neoclassicism, not influenced by medieval sculpture, which could have been one way to approach Romantic sculpture. When Romantic sculpture did develop, it was rare in Germany, except for a few artists like Rudolf Maison, and was mostly found in France. Key French sculptors included François Rude, known for his work on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris from the 1830s, David d'Angers, and Auguste Préault. Préault’s plaster relief called Slaughter, which showed the intense suffering of war, caused a major scandal at the Salon of 1834. Because of this, Préault was not allowed to participate in this official art exhibition for nearly twenty years. In Italy, the most important Romantic sculptor was Lorenzo Bartolini.

Gallery

• Joseph Vernet, 1759, Shipwreck; this painting shows the 18th-century idea of the sublime
• Joseph Wright, 1774, Cave at Evening, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts
• Philip James de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801; this is a key place during the English Industrial Revolution

• Théodore Géricault, The Charging Chasseur, around 1812
• Ingres, The Death of Leonardo da Vinci, 1818; this is one of his paintings in the Troubadour style
• Eugène Delacroix, Collision of Moorish Horsemen, 1843–44
• Eugène Delacroix, The Bride of Abydos, 1857; this painting is based on a poem by Byron

• Joseph Anton Koch, Waterfalls at Subiaco, 1812–1813; art historians call this a "classical" landscape
• James Ward, 1814–1815, Gordale Scar
• John Constable, 1821, The Hay Wain; this is one of Constable’s large "six footers"
• J. C. Dahl, 1826, Eruption of Vesuvius; created by an artist who closely followed Friedrich’s style
• William Blake, around 1824–27, The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides, Tate
• Karl Bryullov, The Last Day of Pompeii, 1833; located at The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
• Isaac Levitan, Pacific, 1898; located at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
• J. M. W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835); located at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Hans Gude, Winter Afternoon, 1847; located at the National Gallery of Norway, Oslo
• Hans Gude, Fra Hardanger, 1847; an example of Norwegian romantic nationalism
• Ivan Aivazovsky, 1850, The Ninth Wave; located at the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
• John Martin, 1852, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; located at Laing Art Gallery
• Frederic Edwin Church, 1860, Twilight in the Wilderness; located at the Cleveland Museum of Art
• Albert Bierstadt, 1863, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak
• Francesco Hayez, Crusaders Thirsting near Jerusalem (1836–50); located at Palazzo Reale, Turin